Prone to attacks of randomness

[daemonluna]

I feel the need to ramble about several random things tonight. I also have intentions of posting an equally random assortment of fic recs, too. We'll see how that goes later...

READING LISTS

I am up to forty-nine books read from my award committee pile o' doom. I am afraid that I have inadverently picked up a self-published book for my next one. *eyes book suspiciously* And it's blurbed inside by someone at a Catholic elementary school, someone at a private Christian school, and then it starts with a bible verse and an inspiring quote. Ummmmmmm. I am dubious and wary. (Then there was always the book from last year with the comma error IN THE TITLE.) My self-published book rant, let me spare you from it.

DOMESTICITY

About six months ago, I inherited a hand-me-down sewing machine from my aunt. My grandmother was a seamstress, and both my mom and my aunt sew well enough to follow a pattern, hem pants, or put a button back on. Um. I can put buttons back on, sort of. Anyhow, at one point my grandma bought my mom and my aunt identical sewing machines, so this is the same machine on which I learned to sew. And by sew, I mean I can kind of do a straight-ish line.

It is a Singer Touch & Sew 600. It was a refurbished machine in 1971--it's originally from 1963. In theory, it can do all sorts of fancy stitches and everything. (The REALLY fancy stuff requires some metal disks that go inside that I fear have been lost to the mists of time.) My mom still has a copy of the manual for hers, which I have borrowed and am going to photocopy and return. Random googling has informed me that this was one of the last lines made with all metal gears inside, no plastic. With the help of a demonstration from my mom, I have remembered how to wind the bobbin.

Anyhow, with the luxury of last weekend being a long weekend, I spent a morning wandering around on home decorating blogs--always a dangerous prospect--and now I am attempting to create a cover for the small cat's favourite chair out of an old Ikea sheet and a couple worn-out towels. Next up, a cover for troutkitty's notebooks with pockets for post-its and pens. I have no plans for any projects that can't be accomplished with interesting-looking scraps from the remnants bin, however.

LIFESTUFF

We made yummy things for Valentine's Day. troutkitty has finally seen the specialist for her evil arm issues. Surgery isn't an option, but thank GOD, the pain management clinic people seem to be helping. I was suddenly craving brunch at the Deane House this morning like WHOA, eggs benedict on their yummy, yummy biscuits. I was willing to concede, however, that driving the four hours to Calgary and back in the ice fog and if we left THAT MINUTE getting there fifteen minutes before they stopped serving brunch was probably not the best plan. So my girl made me biscuits. I loves her. For more than her biscuit-making tendencies, of course. But they were good biscuits.

WORKSTUFF

I can see the end of The Grant That Ate My Brain. It's for our early literacy/family literacy program, and is for three years at a time. I have inherited this program from another department, and they are a much smaller department and not so inclined to, oh, write things down. Like where the numbers in last year's proposed budget CAME FROM. (The answer, usually: oh, we ran out of time, so we just guessed. I've done some guessing too. But my guessing goes on a spreadsheet with explanations, and is really more of an estimate, I hope. And I made our financial person double-check my math and spreadsheets.) And the prior application is also prone to vague statements without any concrete explanations of how we are going to accomplish these lofty goals. It's all about specific, concrete strategies (and occasionally, measurable outcomes), baby.

I wasn't supposed to have to do this particular grant application until 2011, but last year, the proposal was turned down. We were lucky in that the granting agency said, okay guys, we will give you money to run the program for one more year, but we want you to submit a revised three year proposal next year as to how you're going to target high needs families REALLY FOR REAL THIS TIME.

Guess what? It's next year now.

I have been doing all the pretty words, and my partner-in-crimegrant-writing has been chasing down hard data. We have met with other organizations, gone to a day-long workshop in scenic Brooks, crunched numbers, made spreadsheets, chased stats that didn't support any of our conclusions definitively or flat-out didn't exist, chased around in pursuit of signatures from fourteen different partnered and supporting agencies, relied on anecdotal evidence, played telephone tag with people at the granting agency and eventually had a two-hour conference call that cumulated in a discussion of how best for the program participants to transport leftover soup home on the bus, cancelled one existing site in favour of another where the person at that site didn't tell her boss that we were for sure going to start in two weeks and now we need her to sign forms and she is out of town and won't be back until the day before the grant needs to be ON THEIR DESKS IN EDMONTON. (Hellooooo, next-day delivery Canada Post!)

I have been literally dreaming about this stupid proposal for the past few weeks. (I stopped working on it and went to bed one night last week when I realized I had created a sentence with the masterful turn of phrase, "in order to facilitate the accessibility to access....")

SO. ALMOST. DONE. The budget balances now, and I just need to pretty up two last sections of random notes into real sentences. That will be tomorrow afternoon. Then, in and around assorted other things on Tuesday, I will ruthlessly chop all rambling sentences back into coherence. Then we will proofread the hell out of it, make sure all the appendices and attachments are appended and attached and all things that must be signed have indeed been signed... send it off, and hope they like it.

And then I get to go back to all the things I have been pushing off to one side while working on the grant app. I have a teen program on Friday for which I have yet to even see one of the games we are supposed to be playing (Wii Music, to go with Guitar Hero and Rock Band) and have done nothing at all about figuring out where we are going to get any of the anime series on DVD, let alone the public performance rights, for our March program. (Anyone want to lend me the first episode of Bleach, Ranma, Fruits Basket, Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, EVA, and is Ouran host Club even out on DVD? We have Fullmetal Alchemist.)

SPEAKING OF MEDIA CONSUMPTION...

troutkitty is mainlining Farscape. We are both pleasantly surprised at Being Erica. (Although the end of Rabbit Fall was a HUGE disappointment.) Being Human is in no way similiar or related, but also of the good. I have decided that I want to watch Psych.

And now I need to go to SLEEP.

Comments

[alessar.livejournal.com]

Farscape was fun. It's always nice to find some hiden little gem you can watch later.

PS: there are 4 Ts in troutkitty.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely right, there are.

And I have enjoyed the bits I've see of Farscape, but just don't seem to be in the mood right now to sit down and watch it. I've been watching Psych. It's cute and clever and is fluffy enough for my current lack of attention span.

[guyindkny.livejournal.com]

I too am quite enjoying Being Erica. And I want to see Being Human after having watched the prequel shorts on YouTube. But have you started on Dollhouse yet?

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

Being Erica is pretty awesome, for what it is. I mean, the plot isn't brilliantly deep and complex, but I love how everyone is a fully-rounded character. I think it's the first time I've come across a show that's aimed squarely at our generation, in terms of the references, and the nostalgia.

[paige-eliz.livejournal.com]

A video representation of the signature-fetching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

That is awesome and yeah, looks about right. (You know those forms where we needed to send all the originals to Edmonton yesterday? One of the food banks faxed it to us today.)